Ok, this isn't really a recipe, but it is one of my favorite discoveries of recent times. And it has to do with me not liking salad all that much. Salad is, as we all probably know, a "healthy" food. Unless you live somewhere with less-than-sanitary growing conditions. Then it is a green, leafy deathtrap. However, I like my food cooked. Well cooked. Not to say overcooked. Just not raw. Or even close to raw. This also applies to the meat products that I ever more-infrequently eat. Beef Tartar: three words: musky slimy sickly-sweet. FYI I also don't care for sushi. Maybe I would like it in Japan. I've been told western sushi is like the pale, facebooking half-cousin of the footballer real sushi. With that in mind, I also freely admit to a passion for deep-fried sushi. Yum. Throw in some cream cheese and spicy mayo sauce and I am in xenophobic sushi heaven. Anyway, despite the fact that I do not, on the balance, prefer salad, I occasionally have some in the house because I know it's a filling and nutritious way to get some vitamins and fiber in my diet and, honestly, the grocery store sells salad greens in pesky whole heads. However, remember that I was brought up in part by Grandmom. So I can't abide eating one or two bowls of it over the course of almost a month and watching the rest of it turn into mush in my refrigerator. What, oh what, is a girl to do? Nothing, at least, nothing intentionally. (Intentionally, I have been known to neglect things I don't want to eat in the refrigerator until they spoil because then I have to throw them away.) I will now pass on to you my accidentally-discovered miracle way of keeping salad fresh in the refrigerator for almost a month.
Forever Fresh Salad Greens
You will need:
1 glass bowl (I don't know if this is a factor, but it's what I always use so I'm just throwing it out there in case it's actually a critical element)
1 large square of cheesecloth.
That's it. Wash your greens really well in the sink. By "really well," I mean tear all the leaves off the core of your lettuce, then putting them in the sink and filling it up partway with water, then dabbling them around like you're washing lacy fragile underwear. For the men out there, wash it like you're washing your balls. There. I said it. Basically what this means is swooshing the water around in the sink but not really handling the lettuce much, per se, although you do want to turn each leaf fully over at least once. If necessary (if there's a some stubborn earth, for example), you may need to pick up an individual leaf partly out of the water, sort of rub the dirt off, and then splash the leaf around until the remainder of the dirt comes off.
Once your greens are all washed, chop or tear the leaves into bite-sized pieces. Why all the fuss about swooshing the lettuce when you're only going to tear it? Because each tear is inevitable, but also relatively clean and neat. If you create bruising in the body of the leaves, it will allow slime-making bacteria points of entrance, thus making your lettuce go bad faster. Line your glass bowl with the cheesecloth, making sure there is ample cheesecloth hanging over the sides (there's a purpose for this). Put your pieces of lettuce in the bowl. (I usually tear them right out of the sink and put them directly in the bowl.) The cheesecloth will absorb any excess water. And here is where I think the magic happens. Once you put all of your lettuce in the bowl, fold the excess cheesecloth over the top, covering all of the lettuce. And put your bowl in the fridge. It's my impression that the cheesecloth continuously wicks away moisture from your greens, thus preventing a large amount of bacterial growth and spoilage. Whatever it is, your lettuce will remain crisp, unbrowned, unslimed, and tasty for far longer than you would have thought possible. I haven't timed it, but I know regularly prepared lettuce lasts tastily about a week, maybe a week and a half for me, but if I do it this way it's about twice as long.
_________________
I am about to share one of my favorite family stories. However, it does not involve Grandmom. (Sorry Grandmom!) It's from the other side of the family, and does not even concern family members, but close friends of the family.
Once upon a time, there was World War Two. There was also a young couple in love. The man enlisted as an officer, and went off to training before being deployed. On one of his leaves, the young couple married. Then, the officer was deployed. The wife was destraught. She missed her beloved husband, and she knew that wherever he was, he was getting shot at and maybe even killed. She couldn't stand it. She couldn't stand the tension between getting to see him on leaves and not knowing if it was the last time she ever did.
So she enlisted in the Women's Air Service Program. Yes, she became a WASP. Her reasoning was that she couldn't keep her husband getting killed, but she could fight Hitler too, and if her husband did get killed, she could take it out of Hitler one pound of flesh at a time. So she learned to fly a plane, and became one of the many women pilots who shipped supplies and equipment from factories to the places where they would be picked up and transported to the point of battle.
So now it was the two of them who had to coordinate leave schedules to meet. The Missus, being a pilot, had the luxury of being able to occasionally borrow planes and fly home. And here comes my favorite part:
On one such meeting, her husband arrived earlier than she did in their hometown. (By automobile.) He waited for her in the field that that she was supposed to land in. He saw her plane approaching, and then, the unthinkable happened: something went wrong with the plane. It began a long and desperate descent, ending in a spectacular crash in the middle of the field. He was horrified. It was any devoted husband's worst nightmare. He ran over to the plane. The Missus emerged, mostly unscathed. Of course, he asked the question most people would ask first: "Are you alright?" And she answered: "Yes, but that sonofabitch isn't ever going to fly again."
Why is that my favorite part? It exemplifies, I think, one of the most useful skills anyone can learn in life: how to go down in flames. (I don't know if there were literal flames in this case.) Did she panic? Did she freeze? Did she go into some form of suicidal denial? No. She crashed that sonofabitch in the middle of the field, climbed out of the wreckage, and went on a date with her husband. Going down in flames is something that few of us, if anyone, can prevent occuring in our lives. But being able to handle it not gracefully (explain to me how grace is going to assist in landing a damaged aircraft) but effectively is what makes the difference between being a statistic and being a survivor, and the difference between being a survivor and being someone who had something bad happen to them one time, but went on to experience things that defined them far more.
Forever Fresh Salad Greens
You will need:
1 glass bowl (I don't know if this is a factor, but it's what I always use so I'm just throwing it out there in case it's actually a critical element)
1 large square of cheesecloth.
That's it. Wash your greens really well in the sink. By "really well," I mean tear all the leaves off the core of your lettuce, then putting them in the sink and filling it up partway with water, then dabbling them around like you're washing lacy fragile underwear. For the men out there, wash it like you're washing your balls. There. I said it. Basically what this means is swooshing the water around in the sink but not really handling the lettuce much, per se, although you do want to turn each leaf fully over at least once. If necessary (if there's a some stubborn earth, for example), you may need to pick up an individual leaf partly out of the water, sort of rub the dirt off, and then splash the leaf around until the remainder of the dirt comes off.
Once your greens are all washed, chop or tear the leaves into bite-sized pieces. Why all the fuss about swooshing the lettuce when you're only going to tear it? Because each tear is inevitable, but also relatively clean and neat. If you create bruising in the body of the leaves, it will allow slime-making bacteria points of entrance, thus making your lettuce go bad faster. Line your glass bowl with the cheesecloth, making sure there is ample cheesecloth hanging over the sides (there's a purpose for this). Put your pieces of lettuce in the bowl. (I usually tear them right out of the sink and put them directly in the bowl.) The cheesecloth will absorb any excess water. And here is where I think the magic happens. Once you put all of your lettuce in the bowl, fold the excess cheesecloth over the top, covering all of the lettuce. And put your bowl in the fridge. It's my impression that the cheesecloth continuously wicks away moisture from your greens, thus preventing a large amount of bacterial growth and spoilage. Whatever it is, your lettuce will remain crisp, unbrowned, unslimed, and tasty for far longer than you would have thought possible. I haven't timed it, but I know regularly prepared lettuce lasts tastily about a week, maybe a week and a half for me, but if I do it this way it's about twice as long.
_________________
I am about to share one of my favorite family stories. However, it does not involve Grandmom. (Sorry Grandmom!) It's from the other side of the family, and does not even concern family members, but close friends of the family.
Once upon a time, there was World War Two. There was also a young couple in love. The man enlisted as an officer, and went off to training before being deployed. On one of his leaves, the young couple married. Then, the officer was deployed. The wife was destraught. She missed her beloved husband, and she knew that wherever he was, he was getting shot at and maybe even killed. She couldn't stand it. She couldn't stand the tension between getting to see him on leaves and not knowing if it was the last time she ever did.
So she enlisted in the Women's Air Service Program. Yes, she became a WASP. Her reasoning was that she couldn't keep her husband getting killed, but she could fight Hitler too, and if her husband did get killed, she could take it out of Hitler one pound of flesh at a time. So she learned to fly a plane, and became one of the many women pilots who shipped supplies and equipment from factories to the places where they would be picked up and transported to the point of battle.
So now it was the two of them who had to coordinate leave schedules to meet. The Missus, being a pilot, had the luxury of being able to occasionally borrow planes and fly home. And here comes my favorite part:
On one such meeting, her husband arrived earlier than she did in their hometown. (By automobile.) He waited for her in the field that that she was supposed to land in. He saw her plane approaching, and then, the unthinkable happened: something went wrong with the plane. It began a long and desperate descent, ending in a spectacular crash in the middle of the field. He was horrified. It was any devoted husband's worst nightmare. He ran over to the plane. The Missus emerged, mostly unscathed. Of course, he asked the question most people would ask first: "Are you alright?" And she answered: "Yes, but that sonofabitch isn't ever going to fly again."
Why is that my favorite part? It exemplifies, I think, one of the most useful skills anyone can learn in life: how to go down in flames. (I don't know if there were literal flames in this case.) Did she panic? Did she freeze? Did she go into some form of suicidal denial? No. She crashed that sonofabitch in the middle of the field, climbed out of the wreckage, and went on a date with her husband. Going down in flames is something that few of us, if anyone, can prevent occuring in our lives. But being able to handle it not gracefully (explain to me how grace is going to assist in landing a damaged aircraft) but effectively is what makes the difference between being a statistic and being a survivor, and the difference between being a survivor and being someone who had something bad happen to them one time, but went on to experience things that defined them far more.
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